Tag Archives: International Ocean Colour Science

Juneâ€™s been a really busy month for me on the worldâ€™s oceans. Iâ€™ve not actually been out on the water, but flying over it having attended both the World Ocean Summit and the International Ocean Colour Science (IOCS) meeting. Both of these events focussed on the oceans, although they had very different participants and perspectives. In addition, the 8th June was also World Oceans Day and had the theme ‘Healthy Oceans, Healthy Planet’.

The World Ocean Summit, organised by The Economist, took place at the start of June in Cascais, Portugal. It focused on the development of the blue economy, with most of the participants from governments or non-profit non-governmental organizations. There were a number of talks highlighting the potential innovation opportunities the worldâ€™s ocean might offer, and the policy and worldwide governance framework needed. Throughout the summit, there was a repeatedly voiced concern over the state of the worldâ€™s oceans, and the serious peril and decline itâ€™s in. Whilst many large organisations are now looking to exploit the oceans, many local communities have been doing this for years and they are seeing changes and challenges. The oceans are an integral part of Earthâ€™s ecosystem, and without them we could not survive on this planet. The resources are potentially huge, but tapping into these requires a co-ordinated bottom up approach. Otherwise we risk damaging the ocean and our own existence.

My second major event was IOCS last week in San Francisco, and as the name suggests the meeting focused on mapping and understanding the ocean through the use of ocean colour remote sensing i.e., detecting and quantifying what causes changes in the colour. The participants were mostly scientists, students and space agencies, who were discussing current work and future plans. There was obvious excitement over the launch of Sentinel-2 (which incidentally occurred successfully very early yesterday morning) and Sentinel-3, which will carry the OLCI ocean colour sensor, due to be launched towards the end of this year. Cloud cover remains a limiting factor in many locations, as clouds get in the way when optically sensing of the ocean and so the more data collected the better insight we’ll gain into the complexities of the biological processes.

There were lots of new areas of focus discussed at the meeting. I was particularly interested in exporting of carbon to the deep ocean and the calculation of uncertainties i.e., how well have we estimated the values that have been derived.

I was also fascinated by the development in our understanding of rapidly changing ecosystems, such as the Arabian Sea and high latitude polar oceans, which are strongly affected by the effects of climate changing; for example, the reduction of the snow cover over the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau region changes the strength of the Asian monsoon season, which in turn impacts the phytoplankton that bloom in the Arabian Sea. This has caused a particular species of plankton to bloom (Noctiluca, also known as sea sparkle because it can glow when disturbed at night), which are eaten by jellyfish but can negatively affect fisheries as theyâ€™re too big for zooplankton to eat.

Iâ€™d love to say after a busy month itâ€™s good be home, but Iâ€™ve not quite got there yet! I went straight from San Francisco to Switzerland, where this week Iâ€™m attending the 2015 Dragon Symposium thatâ€™s focused on an Earth observation scientific exchange programme between the European Space Agency and China.